Quotes by Robert Jay Lifton

About Robert Jay Lifton:

Robert Jay Lifton is an American psychiatrist and author, chiefly known for his studies of the psychological causes and effects of war and political violence and for his theory of thought reform. He was an early proponent of the techniques of psychohistory.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

When we consider further the social and psychological roots of the collective urge to kill the world, we are likely to see more of ourselves in it and to begin to think of such groups as something of a dark "cultural underground" of our own society. ...

Robert Jay Lifton

In sum, doubling is the psychological means by which one invokes the evil potential of the self. That evil is neither inherent in the self nor foreign to it. To live out the doubling and call forth the evil is a moral choice for which one is responsi...

Robert Jay Lifton

I'm a Brooklyn boy. I was born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised there, and spent most of my childhood there.

Robert Jay Lifton

I don't have the feeling that as a very young person I read books that absolutely made their mark on my mind.

Robert Jay Lifton

Again, I was influenced by my father, who was very much an atheist and took pride in combating the traditional or orthodox forms of Judaism, which his parents and which my mother's parents were very steeped in.

Robert Jay Lifton

Sometimes it's said that psychiatrists are doctors who are frightened by the sight of blood. I might have fallen into that category.

Robert Jay Lifton

I never quite envisioned myself a proper doctor under that white coat, but I was interested in the idea of healing and in the psychological dimension rather early on.

Robert Jay Lifton

The other thing that happened was my last military assignment - this was in the air force; I had enlisted in order to avoid being drafted as a private, and of course I only practiced medicine or psychiatry in the air force so I was never in any kind ...

Robert Jay Lifton

And I managed to arrange to get some research support and to stay in Hong Kong for another year and a half, interviewing people coming out of China, both Westerners and Chinese. And that was my first real research study on thought reform or so-called...

Robert Jay Lifton

What I found was when I started my first study, and then in subsequent studies, is here you have people under some kind of duress, or I chose to study them because they represented some kind of historical event, as it impacted on them or as they help...

Robert Jay Lifton

I did the first study because I had been exposed to something that I took to be important and interesting - this thought reform process - in the military.

Robert Jay Lifton

It was because of my deep concerns about nuclear weapons that I went to Hiroshima. And then I was astounded in Hiroshima to find that nobody had really studied it.

Robert Jay Lifton

I struggled with each of these studies and I was uncertain about what they meant, and often confused, and then I tried to put together what I was seeing.

Robert Jay Lifton

One reason that I embarked on a study of Nazi doctors was that in this personal journey, I had the feeling increasingly that I did want to do a Holocaust study and that increasingly I wanted it to be of perpetrators, which I thought was more needed.

Robert Jay Lifton

But when I went to Hiroshima and began to study or just listen to people's descriptions of their work, it was quite clear they were talking about death all the time, about people dying all around them, about their own fear of death.

Robert Jay Lifton

It may sound terrible, but I often say that the military saved me from a conventional life in the United States and I've never really thanked them for it, because I haven't exactly been pro-military in my work.

Robert Jay Lifton

And I thought about the psychic numbing involved in strategic projections of using hydrogen bombs or nuclear weapons of any kind. And I also thought about ways in which all of us undergo what could be called the numbing of everyday life.

Robert Jay Lifton

When I was still in my psychiatric residency training in New York City, I was subjected to the doctor draft of that time, during the early fifties, at the time of the Korean War.

Robert Jay Lifton

Every adult in the world has some sense that he or she might be obliterated at any time by these weapons that we have created.

Robert Jay Lifton

As a kid I was fascinated with sports, and I loved sports more than anything else. The first books I read were about sports, like books about Baseball Joe, as one baseball hero was called.

Robert Jay Lifton

Author Bio

  • NameRobert Jay Lifton
  • DescriptionAmerican psychiatrist
  • BornMay 16, 1926
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionPsychiatrist; Historian; Author
  • AwardsNational Book Award; Gandhi Peace Award